Describing the U.S. attack on Iran, which will hit the two-week mark Saturday, Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) said many Americans might need to recall their U.S.-Iran history.
That history includes 1983, in Beirut, when the U.S. embassy was hit with a suicide bomber who killed 17 Americans. Six months later, a U.S. Marine barracks there was hit in a similar truck-driven suicide attack that killed 241 military service members.
“We've been basically at war for 47 years with Iran. We've just not pushed back,” Lankford told the “Washington Watch” program.
The quiet-spoken Lankford, an ordained Southern Baptist minister, is not known as a war hawk Republican like Lindsey Graham.
A similar reminder on Iran was released by the White House days after Epic Fury began. “More Americans have been killed by Iran than any other terrorist regime on Earth,” the statement, which begins in 1979, when U.S. Embassy staff were taken hostage in Tehran, says.
Over the decades, Lankford said, attacks by Iran’s proxy terrorist groups became so common they have barely made news headlines any more.
“So the president's determined to end their ability to just attack us on a weekly basis, over and over again, and to be able to stop that,” the Senator said.
So far, after Operation Epic Fury began Feb. 28, seven U.S. service members have been killed. Six of those deaths occurred in Kuwait, when an Iranian drone hit a tactical operations center.
A separate drone and missile attack in Saudi Arabia killed the seventh U.S. service member, a sergeant in the Space Brigade.
On March 10, the Pentagon announced 140 U.S. service members have been injured or wounded. That number includes eight with severe wounds and 108 who have returned to duty.
Sen. Lankford told a local news outlet Epic Fury will be successful when it ends Iran's nuclear weapons development and ballistic missile program, and when Iran's ability to block the Strait of Hormuz is over.
The Pentagon's current air and naval attack on Iran, which has now struck 5,000 targets, has not ruled out the need for U.S. grounds troops.
